New Year's
by attica
Summary: WIP! Finally, he says, through his teeth: "It wasn't nothing. Or, at least, if you insist it be nothing, then it is a nothing that exists in complete contradiction of its nothingness. A very big, sleepless nothing. A very still-not-over kind of nothing." D/Hr
1. Chapter 1

New Year's

**A/N**: So, this is going to be incredibly OOC (but then again, to my faithful readers, I believe that disclaimer is unnecessary? Right?) but I couldn't sleep the other night and ended up writing this. This is also only going to be a few chapters (2 or 3, tops) so enjoy!

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><p>Sometimes Hermione Granger could spend hours staring at frost on windows. All of the funny little crystallized patterns; they reminded her of how she used to look into the lenses of the cheap, plastic kaleidoscopes she used to get at all of the parties she used to go to when she was younger. Not as colorful, but still as curious.<p>

"Sweet, there's a man at the door for you. Says he knows you from school."

Her mother says this with a look on her face that tells her perfectly well it isn't one of her usual "men that are with her but aren't really _with_ her", like Harry and Ron. She puts down her coffee and book, her newly piqued curiosity making her simultaneously self-conscious, so she smoothes down her sweater as she exits her parents' kitchen.

When she sees who it is, sitting on her parents' couch – the same one she had thrown up on when she'd gotten the stomach flu one winter when she was nine – she freezes right where she is and doesn't come any closer. Her mother offers him some tea and he declines, polite albeit still distant, his cool eyes skimming all of the interesting Muggle trinkets and Muggle inventions that crowd her humble little Muggle home.

"Well, I'll just be upstairs," her mum tells her, giving her a look that said 'I have no idea who this is, and you'd best well tell me later' and 'You never told me you knew any boys this handsome!' before she silently walked up the stairs.

She crosses her arms. A defense mechanism, she'd once learned. "It's New Year's Eve, Draco. Am I supposed to believe you've just gotten severely lost on your way to some glamorous party?"

"Funny you say that, Granger," he says, and she is once again reminded of the way that he has never called her by her first name, always by her surname – except under extenuating circumstances, whatever those might be – and she's never asked, even though she's always wanted to. She was just always afraid of being thought of as petty, or to let him think that she _wanted_ him to call her by her first name. Which she obviously didn't, she was just curious, that was all – except of course, that would never fly by him.

Draco Malfoy had lived his whole life thinking everybody was either in love with him or wanted to be him, and there was no way she was going to egg that sort of nonsensical way of thinking on.

"Because I sent you an invitation to that so-called glamorous party, and you never RSVP'd," he continued, looking at her with those cool gray eyes of his. They're incredibly unnerving, she observes to herself, like pale little stones in a creek of cold yet clear running water. Even more unnerving when she saw even the most remote hint of warmth in them, but she wouldn't think about that right now, no, she wouldn't.

"So I've come here to personally collect your RSVP," he says. He had spread himself out on the couch like he owned it, his long arms covered in an expensive black coat spread out, his knees covered in expensive trousers jutting out in the front.

"Ever consider the fact that maybe I didn't RSVP because I didn't want to?" she says.

"Well, it's simply impolite, Granger, to just show up at a party without RSVPing—"

"Because I wasn't going to go?"

He looks at her. "But you always go to my parties."

"Correction: I went to one party," she says, a little stiffly. She remembered this party. It was his 21st birthday party, and she had showed up to the famous Malfoy Manor with a book she knew he would despise (a funny little book titled 'The Idiot's Guide to Being a Decent Person') and probably would never read but nevertheless needed it. She had been to many parties before, but never anything of that caliber. Expensive champagne and liquor spouting out of marble fountains, twinkly lights everywhere, ice sculptures of dragons (tacky, and she would tell him so), glowing rich girls that brushed by her without ever really noticing that she was there. It was not as uppity as she thought it would be – rich Purebloods grouped up and talking about business or art – but was exactly the kind of party a rich 21-year-old boy would have. There was a live band and lots of people nudging past each other, laughing and talking above the music.

The entire night of that party, she felt misplaced and sipped her drink, never really quite knowing why she had come. Maybe because her name had been on the envelope and it seemed important at the time, and maybe because, sure, a little part of her had been curious to see what all this fuss was about his parties. That night didn't disappoint as far as grandeur, but it was like a peephole into a life she was so far removed from, it was almost like watching an old television show from the 1950's, or flipping through the pages of a book of fairytales.

Her life was not as sparkly, considerably lacking in the ice sculpture department, and definitely never encountered marble fountains of champagne. She was contemplating all this, nibbling on a chocolate-covered strawberry, and half-decided on leaving, when he showed up beside her.

"You came," he said to her. His glass refilled by itself, golden and sparkling fluid rising to the top.

"I RSVP'd," she said. Suddenly she wondered if the invitation had really been meant for her, but the way he looked at her let her know it had. It really had. "This is great," she said, as someone edged in between them, grabbing a plate of chocolate-covered food, before disappearing. "Amazing, really."

"My mum likes to plan parties," he said to her, coming in close enough, talking above the music. She froze. It had been a long time since she'd been this close to him – an entire year, actually. You would think that because they were in a house full of people it would make the contact less personal, less intimate, but it felt exactly the same. A little part of her, inside, began to vibrate and glow, like lit fireflies in a jar.

She'd stayed away, despite his want of communication, because at the time she thought she'd known what was good for her. He was not one of those things. When she'd RSVP'd to his birthday party, it was like giving in. One last time, she'd told herself, and then you can forget. You can face him and see for yourself all of the chits hanging off his arm, and finally get over it. It was incredibly mental that way. She needed to have her hopes all personally dashed before she could finally look on the other way.

As they stood there, she waited for a girl to come by and snatch him away. A pretty girl, with long legs and perfect hair, exactly the kind of girl that rich handsome boys went for, thus proving the symmetrical nature of their world.

"I see you've brought me a gift," he said, glancing down at what she was clutching, and then he grabbed her hand and began to lead her through the crowd. "Come on."

She opened her mouth to protest, but it was lost with the cacophony of the people they passed. He guided her as they zigzagged past expensively dressed people, who – from the nudge – looked at her curiously but went on with their business. He took her up an enormous flight of stairs, where she counted at least 3 couples making out, and then to the upper part of the Manor, where the noise disappeared, and so did the people. They were alone, and it made her even more conscious of the way he was tightly gripping her hand.

Finally, he let go, and he walked into a room, where she followed. It was a library. An obscenely large library, with books that stretched to the ceiling – not just any kind of books, but the old kind, her favorite kind.

"You are incredibly cruel to bring me in here," she said to him. She knew he was watching her so she tried not to seem so impressed.

He shrugged. "It's quieter in here. Now where's my present?"

She couldn't help but smirk a little as she handed it to him. He took it from her and tore the corner, ripping off the gift wrap and staring at the cover. "'The Idiot's Guide to Being a Decent Person'? Very clever, Granger."

"I just worry about you, that's all," she said to him, as she began to peruse the nearby shelves with her eyes.

"But I don't have to be decent. I've got money."

"Money doesn't last forever. It's got to disappear sometime."

"Then you obviously haven't looked into my Gringotts vault."

She traced a book's spine with her finger, thinking to herself that he hadn't changed at all. But had she really expected him to change? What was a prerequisite for change, anyway? Some important or moving event in your life, to make you realize hidden truths about yourself? And what would a kind of event like that entail for someone like Draco – running out of hair gel, perhaps?

"I'm surprised Potter and Weasley aren't glued to your side," he said, a bit snidely.

She kept her eyes on the books. "They don't know I'm here. But what about you? Where are the throngs of women I hear you supposedly plow through in the course of one night?"

" 'Plow through'? Merlin's crack pipe, Granger, you've become even more lewd than I remember."

"It's the truth, isn't it?"

He didn't answer her. "Tell me about how you've started to use 'plowing through' as part of your vocabulary, I bet that's very interesting." He thought for a minute. "Or better yet, tell me about all the plowing _you've_ been doing."

"That is highly inappropriate."

"The term 'plowing through' is highly inappropriate, and that didn't stop you. Come on, Granger. You haven't answered any of my owls and it's my birthday. Humor me a little."

Draco Malfoy sat there and watched her. She was wearing a sexy black dress, modest in the front but scooped low in the back, and it did things to him, watching her bare back. Didn't she know that a woman's back was one of his favorite parts of a woman's body (besides the obvious, of course)? Had he ever told her? Probably not. Nevertheless, she could have shown up in a potato sack and he would have been happy to see her. But it was probably important to point out that he was happier seeing her in this gorgeous black dress scooped low in the back that he could see the three little moles near her dainty spine, the ones that formed some kind of invisible triangle. The more he stared at it, the more he wanted to touch his fingers to it, like he'd done so, once so long ago.

He told himself not to go there, had set up the DO NOT ENTER mental tape to that part of his memories, but it was impossible, especially with that backless dress of hers. She was here, she was here, he kept telling himself, and he had debated either ignoring her existence completely (just like she had done him, with his letters) or taking her up here, to his gigantic and romantic library, and pushing all of the right buttons. Obviously the latter won out, and now he was here, trying to memorize the sight of her bare back as she eye-fucked his books. What a sexy back it was. It was pure torture.

He didn't really want to hear about all of the plowing she'd been doing. He said it to test her, to push her a little, to make her angry enough to see if he still affected her. That was all he really wanted. That, and to hear her say, "I haven't plowed anyone, Draco – at least, not since you."

He still thought about that night – more than he would ever care to admit. He had been in love once in his life, and he had done enough thinking to be almost sure it had been with her. It was that young kind of love though, that naïve kind, the kind he endlessly fought against because she didn't fit into the image of the sort of woman he thought he would end up loving (blonde, maybe Swedish, and a good three inches taller and a good breast cup larger, as well as considerably less Muggle). He loved her and he spent most of the time trying to un-love her, which was the unfortunate part, and which she later caught onto, and consequently stopped all further communication.

For awhile though, it had been good. She and him. They. Them. And while it was true he had "plowed" through a decent amount of girls since then, they left him feeling empty afterwards, and he could never fight off the urge to shower and scrub himself clean after they left. Sometimes he wouldn't think of her (those were the good days) but most often he would. Random things about her, like how she was wearing her hair right this moment, what new old book she was reading, if she was letting a man kiss her, if she ever thought about him while she was being kissed, if she still hated him, if she threw out all of his letters without even reading them, or whether she read them and then tucked them away in a box underneath her bed. He missed little things about her too, like the sound of her shallow breathing as she slept, and the way her hair would smell after a shower (like brown sugar and lilies), how she was oddly ticklish at her ankles.

As she turned around, he wished he could tell her all of that. All of the things he couldn't bring himself to pen down on paper and send, he wished he could tell her, on the night of his 21st birthday party, with a hundred people downstairs getting drunk and happy in his honor. It was pathetic what his life had come down to, but he was helpless to the tide just like anyone else.

"While I'd be privileged to be the girl that confesses all of her dirty little secrets to the birthday boy," she said dryly, in that Granger way she always does, "I'm going to have to politely decline." And then she started to shift her feet, and he knew she was going to leave. "Look, I'm going to call it a night. Thanks for inviting me. Oh, and happy birthday."

Hermione was leaving because he had started to look at her that way again, exactly the way she had always wanted to be looked at, but she was escaping from the emotional quicksand that she knew would soon open up underneath her.

"Granger," he said, just as she had turned around and began heading out of the library. He had stood and walked on after her.

Draco looked at her, those murky brown eyes of hers and her unknowingly teasy pink lips, and suppressed the urge to latch onto her and never let go. He got her here, she was finally here, and now he was just going to let her go?

But he did, and he had. "Thanks for coming," he said to her, half-hoping she would catch the subliminal one-word message hidden underneath ("Stay"), but he guessed she didn't, because she only nodded and said goodnight and walked away, out of the manor, and out of his life.

He was left wondering what else could have happened if he had been brave enough to really say what he felt ("Stay"), which of course wasn't new – not for him, nor for the rest of mankind.

And now he is here, a year later, sitting on her couch, after having crossed completely foreign territory, and she can't quite figure out why.

"Why are you here?" she sighs, narrowing her eyes at him. "Who are you hiding from now?"

"Nobody. I just wondered how you were. I wanted to see you, see if you'd gotten married yet or had become a nun." (Subliminally: "I missed you, I had to see you right this second, or I might die.")

"As you can clearly see, I am still unmarried and have not sent myself off to a convent. Is that it?" To her, all of this reeks of bullshit. She knows very well he has an agenda and is dithering about, sitting on her throw-up couch, and she has no time for this. She hadn't even had time to brush her hair a little.

"You don't have to pretend to be so unhappy to see me," he remarks. "We're friends, aren't we? A little?"

Just before she can answer that, her mother pops her head downstairs. "Hermione, we've got to leave soon." And then, glancing at Draco, "Perhaps your friend might want to come. Draco, do you have someplace to be tonight? We've got a lovely New Year's Party we're heading to and wouldn't mind some extra company. Over time these family parties get to be so boring, full of the same people. We need some new blood to spice things up."

As Hermione hears her mom rattle on, she feels something sink inside her like a dead weight. Especially when she sees that mischievous little twinkle in his eye, telling her exactly what she most fears.

"No, really, Mum," she insists - a little petulantly, she'll admit. "He's got his own party, and I really don't want to drive—"

"I'd love to, if anyone wouldn't mind," Draco says, and with a triumphant smile, her mother disappears back upstairs to get ready.

"What do you think you're doing?" she asks him.

"Well, I think I'm going to a lovely party with a friend, but if you disagree, then I'm sure you're about to tell me."

"This is my Uncle Ned's annual New Year's party," she hisses at him. "This is tradition. Muggle tradition, Malfoy, full of Muggle people drinking and saying things they don't mean and having a go at singing badly on the karaoke."

"Like I said. That sounds lovely. Not at all beneath me like you're hinting."

She scoffs. "What happened to your party?"

"It's not until later. And besides, it's my mum's party," he says, nonchalantly. "Now go on, get upstairs and get yourself sorted. I'll wait here."

"You are unbelievable," she says to him, but she marches up the stairs anyway, her heart like a hummingbird in her chest. Un-fucking-believable, she thinks to herself, Draco Malfoy in my parents' living room. But stranger things have happened, haven't they? Yes, of course they have. She knows so because she'd been there for that, too.

ooo

Every year Uncle Ned's New Year's party is the same. Once her Aunt Peach had tried to spice things up by bringing in a little Mexican cuisine in the form of tamales and that had been a big hit, and was therefore put on the New Year's party menu permanently, or at least until the world ran out of tamales, whenever that might possibly be. It was always a little comforting that way, if not a little misleading, having the same New Year's party as the old year ended and the new year officially began. Every year she would have varying shades of the same pre-New Year morning and post-New Year night – except this year, of course, when Draco Malfoy fatefully came knocking on her door.

She keeps her eyes on the icy, wet road as he sits quietly in the passenger seat. It is his first time in a car and he is fascinated by everything about it. The weird Muggle strap fitting uncomfortably across his chest, a bizarre contraption supposed to protect you from flying out in case of an accident (he had only ever seen pictures in his Muggle Studies textbook, of which she was his tutor), the inhuman humming coming from some kind of heater vent, the blinking lights and strange little words on buttons, the buttons (Merlin, the _buttons_!), how adept Granger seems to be at "driving."

He watches her drive with a delicate kind of carefulness, and he thinks to himself, Is there anything she isn't good at? If you stuck her in a cave deep down in the earth for two months, would you eventually come down to see that she had quickly figured out how to mine diamonds in the most efficient way? And had also somehow discovered how to cancer?

They aren't talking so she turns on the radio. Christmas songs are still playing and she almost changes it to another station but decides against it, for no particular reason why.

"You're fucking with me, aren't you, Malfoy?" Except it isn't a question, so she doesn't ask it like one.

"However do you mean, Granger?"

"I mean," she says, as she smoothly turns into a street, her blinkers clicking, "your life suddenly bored you so you decided to come down here – how did you even get my parents' address, anyway? – and make a mess out of my life for your pure amusement."

He looks at her and wonders when she had become such a cynic, so he asks her. She gives him a passing dry look.

"I'm not a cynic. I _know_ you."

"I've forgotten I'm sitting with Hermione Granger, All-Knowing and therefore All-Condemning."

She tightly clamps her lips shut. "Just be on your best behavior."

Please please please let this night end quickly, she thinks to herself. With him disappearing off into the night, forever, occasionally to be wondered about but never to be heard from again.

She parks down the street and deeply sighs to herself, staring at the backs of her parents as they walk inside the house, her dad with the pot of chili in hand and her mum with a platter of quiches. Her Aunt Marsha, who is manning the door, spies her waiting in the car and waves warmly, before squinting to see who she has in her passenger seat. Aunt Marsha then grabs Hermione's mum, asking her a question – no doubt about the pale man sitting beside her, in her tiny car – with an intense look of curiosity.

"Everybody's going to think you're my boyfriend," she mutters, slumping just a little in her seat.

"Are they really?" he muses. "Why is that such a terrible thing, exactly?"

"Because you're not," she finally says, shoving her keys into her coat pocket and getting out of the car. He calmly does the same. "And I'm going to hate the questions and innuendo."

For a minute he relishes the idea that today, no matter how adamantly she denied any sort of romantic entanglement with him, everybody would be somewhat unconvinced. He knows it's going to annoy her (a perk) but also because, if a roomful of dentists and barristers and the occasional nosy housewife could see it, why couldn't she? That they should give it another go, he means. That they could be meant for each other. Maybe not for forever, but at least for now. He would settle for that.

"Come on," she says, motioning to him with a look of deadness in her eyes. But he knows her better than that. He looks down at her hands, fidgeting, opening and closing into a fist, beside her hip. He still makes her nervous, and that is a good sign.

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><p>Please review!<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

**2**

Draco has an audience of riveted Muggles. The women look at him in awe and fascination, dazzled by his good looks and charm, while the men look at him with a mix of both suspicion and respect. Respect because he is a wealthy businessman (the rare kind that doesn't love to talk about it, all day long) (at which Hermione clearly rolls her eyes at, because "business man"? In what world did that equal to a boy born with a heaping trust fund?) and suspicion because why have they never heard of him before? If he's such good friends with their dear little Hermione, at least, why have they only heard of him now? But nevertheless he looks like a nice enough chap, nicer still if they could set up the bar already.

Draco knows how to behave, and Granger watches him like a hawk, attentive for any opportunity to come swooping in and banish him from her beloved Muggle life. He takes a little bit of everything on his plate, compliments everybody's cooking ("Marsha, are these candied pecans in here? How delightful!"), and tells all of the authoritative males what they want to hear. Except the part where they ask him what House he's from, and he glances at Granger, who looks at him with an arched brow, to which he says, "Slytherin," and they all nod, pretending to remember exactly what that means. He's glad they don't, though. He's glad it seems like a million years ago, insignificant enough to comfortably forget.

He is in awe of how comfortable her Muggle relatives are with the fact that Granger is a witch. Where are the Muggles that were hellbent on burning so-called "witches" that he had heard so much about? Maybe their neighbors? But in this house there is no hostility, not even a bit of awkwardness, as if her magical abilities were as normal as young Annie's horse-riding lessons in the country for the summer. He admires their acceptance, and is secretly glad her Muggle family is nothing like the antagonistic public Granger faced in the magical world. Him formerly included.

He sits amongst the Muggles as they chatter and eat. They are incredibly cheery and he realizes he loves this immediately. He used to think that Muggles were happy because they were idiots, but now he looks at Uncle Homer, whose wife has just been diagnosed with cancer, laughing at some self-deprecating joke, and he knows better. He looks at Granger, too, sitting across from him, laughing along with her family, and he thinks, What a bloody nice place to be, surrounded by laughing, happy people that genuinely get on with each other, and how rare an occasion this is for someone like him.

"So, Draco," her Uncle Ned says to him, from across the table, "what's the real truth between you and our little Hermit Crab? Nobody buys this whole 'just friends' rubbish."

Granger freezes, her glass up to her lips, and suddenly everybody's eyes are squarely on the both of them. He only has a little bit of time to relish their affectionate nickname for her ("Hermit crab," how priceless! He would never let her live that one down) before he has to answer.

"Well, the honest truth is," he says, "we used to have a bit of history. But now we're just friends, exactly like how it's been said." And then he smiles.

Uncle Ned snorts. "If Hermy's kept you a secret, I wonder what else she's been hiding from us."

"It didn't last very long at all," she says calmly.

"So why didn't it?" asks Aunt Marsha, and the shuffling stops. Again, all eyes are on them. Draco is thinking, Merlin, this family is honest. No wonder Granger is so aggressive and direct.

"Oh, you must tell us," goads her Aunt Irene. "Hermione is such a secretive girl, this is the first time she's ever brought a real man with her! Besides Harry and Ron, of course."

He is attacked by a mixed pairing of emotions. Glad that they considered him a "real man" and also incredibly jealous that Granger had brought Potter and Weasley to her family functions – and for this emotion, he could bring up no clear logic as to why. Because it wasn't exactly a surprise, was it?

"I just didn't deserve her at the time, is all," he says, trying to maintain his charm despite a very honest confession. Her family chortles but he can feel her shocked gaze pinned on him, like a dead insect pinned on an exhibition board, from directly across the table.

"Well of course you didn't," says her Uncle Ned. "Hard to believe anyone could possibly deserve our little Hermy. She's the prized jewel in our family, you know. No offense, Leroy."

Leroy is her slacker cousin, three years older than her, who works at an electronics store and likes to go to raves in his spare time. His oily little head barely bobs up. "None taken, Uncle Ned."

As they moved on to another topic – Granger's cousin Ben's new fiancé, who is apparently French and generally disliked – Draco meets her eyes and mouths, 'Our little Hermy' and she rolls her eyes at his immaturity. She feels her face start to burn and chugs down her juice, wishing they'd bring out the liquor already, or perhaps not, because already she feels herself dizzyingly getting pulled back down into her old school memories, her mind fogging over with a warm mist of both nostalgia and youthful stupidity.

There was no denying that they'd had an intense kind of tryst – the kind she felt flustered thinking about, snogging in secret corners at school, lying about their whereabouts and agendas to sneak a shag or maybe two, sending each other heavy-lidded looks, covert pats underneath the table, et cetera. It was physical as much as it was emotional; at least it had been, for her. Draco Malfoy was foul and full of himself and if only the world was really that simple, that a person could only be all bad, not at all complicated but so one-dimensional like you grow up believing about ill-meaning people. If that had been true, her last year at school would have been guilt-free, considerably less exciting, and her life generally untainted with the wanton longing for somebody who had hurt her when she most believed life could finally be good, if not at least pleasantly ironic. If only Draco Malfoy really was how he had painted himself out to be, she could have avoided this whole mess in the first place, and she would be having an uncontroversial dinner with her family on New Year's Eve.

At this thought she feels herself get a little sick, so she excuses herself. In the bathroom she washes her face, watching her flushed face dripping into the faucet, her eyes alert yet dazed. 'This is insane,' she thinks to herself, patting her face dry with a towel. 'Complete madness.'

She feels as if she is on some hidden camera show, that any minute now they would be exposing the ridicule and silliness that was her ex-boyfriend (or ex-whatever) dropping in on her so unexpectedly, having a meal with her very Muggle family, listening to talks about scandals at their firms and what kind of new dental equipment they had just ordered, eating things like tamales and burnt quiche and even helping himself to seconds.

People had always told her that life had a very particular sense of humor and now she could honestly say that perhaps she is just one of those people in the audience feigning a chuckle but was ultimately, completely lost, waiting to sneak out during the loo break.

As the day progresses, the women slowly emerge from the kitchen and the liquor cabinet is unlocked, set out on the counter for indulgence, right next to the finger food. Hermione can't count how many glasses she's had as she's standing guard over Malfoy, who seems to be enjoying every insufferable bit of attention he's getting. She keeps watching him, expecting for him to make a mistake, to say something patronizing and cruel, but he hasn't yet, and that's what's so unbelievable. He appears to be getting on with everyone, even her Uncle Ned, who really only likes the dog, Franklin, and she really believes she's stumbled into another dimension.

She retreats into the kitchen as she overhears them talking about scotch.

Her Aunt Peach and Aunt Marsha are drinking as they prep even more food. They giddily smile at her.

"Ah, there's the woman of the hour!" one of them giggles.

"We were just discussing it and we've decided that Draco is a very agreeable man—"

"Handsome, too, and fit – God, have you seen how tight his—"

"Yet you've been hovering over him like a Headmistress on her most ill-behaving student—"

"And those hands! Such lovely, big hands—"

"You clearly aren't as taken with him as we are," her Aunt Marsha finishes, as Aunt Peach sprinkles some powdered sugar over the mini-pies, still grinning.

"What a shame, too," Aunt Peach remarks. "Oh if but I was only your age, Hermione, I would just sweep him up and never let him go!"

She leans back on the counter, drinking some more. Natural that Draco has won over everybody but her, her family matriarchs raving about his hands and insinuating a slightly inappropriate crush. What else could she do but fill up her cup?

"What really happened, Hermione? Back at school."

She lowers her glass and ponders for a minute. What does one say to these questions? More specifically, what does one say to these questions that won't reveal too much about the flaws in their relationship, and/or either persons within said relationship? Or her bitterness, at that. Or the hurt that pathetically outlasted the duration of the relationship itself.

"We were young," she says, settling for a cliché and vagueness. "We didn't really know what we were doing."

Again her woozy mind flashes back to the intense hours they spent snogging each other, sending coded letters, the way he would breathe against her bare, moist neck and how it would tingle. But then the darker memories began to drift up, as if proof of the murky underneath – the arguments, the underlying question of allegiance, the mystery behind his true intentions that thrilled yet repulsed her. She believed that their explosive relationship had been an outcome from the tension of the war, a need for an outlet – a need for some kind of normalcy at their age, which just happened to coincide with raging hormones. Unlucky for her, she just happened to choose Malfoy, and he had happened to choose her right back.

"But it's not all that surprising, isn't it?" Ron had said to her, upon finding out, his voice laden with both bitterness and irony. "I mean, look at you. You don't do anything halfway. I don't think you can, to be honest, and that's your own burden to bear."

What was worse was that Ron hadn't been angry with her, nor had he blamed her. He pitied her.

Aunt Marsha tsks at her, giving her a side-look. "I think you knew what you were doing, all right, but you were young and that's what you do when you're young. You fall in love with everybody and get your heart broken by everybody until you've decided you've had enough and you decide to grow up into a jaded adult."

Aunt Peach guffaws. "Oh for God's sake, Marsh, don't go on one of your depressing spiels on Hermione here, she's just a girl. She's not jaded, are you, dear?" Except her aunts are no longer listening, because something in the oven has started smoking, and they quickly put down their wine glasses and slip on oven mitts, cursing under their breaths, and Hermione slips out the door.

ooo

Granger's infamous Uncle Ned has got him cornered and try as he might to charm his way out of the conversation – fifteen whole minutes on the history of scotch, how riveting – Uncle Ned has succeeded in following him around like his shadow, except even his shadow wasn't as diligent. Even Granger, his silent prison guard, has disappeared into the kitchen, leaving him to fend for himself.

Past Uncle Ned he occasionally catches the eyes of the other Grangers, only to give him a pitying look or sometimes a barely-hidden chuckle, not once moving to free him. Is this a test? To see how long he could withstand Ned blabbing on about scotch and fermentation? And where were the women? He is sure any of them would have been glad to steal him away, but now it seems as if they had all disappeared, and now they are all just men, men who like to laugh at other men's suffering, all alone in this room.

At least Ned does not need him to be an active participant of the conversation (not really a conversation, as a conversation would require two voices being heard), aside from the occasional "Oh really?" and "How excellent" and "Such a shame", and so his mind begins to wander, inevitably trailing back to their days at Hogwarts. Eventful, always, and insufferable, always – but then there was that bit of time in their last year when things got bizarre, but in a good way, in that I-didn't-know-Granger-was-such-a-righteous-snogger-and-oh-bollocks-her-hair-smells-like-vanilla-and-honey sort of direction. That point in his life seems like a blur now, like an erotic, passionate yet confused blur. Try as they might to have a merely physical relationship, untouched by outside forces or naïve adolescent dreams of _Love_, it was impossible. All they wanted was innocent sex, and God, they were so young at the time, they thought – they were sure – they could get it without things getting too messy. Though a ridiculous notion now, it just seemed easy at the time, compared to everything else.

He doesn't remember much about that night now, and he can't exactly say he wishes he does. All he remembers is that it ended – he ended it – with his feelings all curled up into a ball inside himself. He remembers getting wasted – God, did he get _wasted_ – because that was the logical thing to do, wasn't it, when you knew you had to do something painful? Like cutting off your own arm, or something along those lines. Liquid courage, they called it, a sad substitute for people who didn't have the real thing.

Each day that passes he finds himself reflecting more and more on that night, along with his 21st birthday, when he could have spoken up or _just done something different_ than stand around and act nonchalant and cool like an idiot, silently yearning like a nine-year-old boy in front of the latest Quidditch broom in the shop window. The scary part was how _good_ he was at it. At acting so indifferent, so cruel towards Granger, the one girl he ever really wanted to wake up to in the morning, at how disgusting his habits were of feeling but never quite being brave enough to act.

And then that one fateful night he stumbled into that woman's shop, half-drunk, only able to sit half as long enough for his fortune to be read, which was that on New Year's day, he, Draco Malfoy, at only 22 years old, would die, really die, because he had found nothing left to live for.

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><p>Thanks for reading and reviewing! Please do so again if you feel so very inclined!<p> 


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N**: I lied! This isn't the last chapter – obviously, which you'll understand why at the end of this chapter. Sorry for the 3 embarrassingly long years it took for this fic to finally get an update. I'm an atrocious fanfic writer. I'll wear that badge because it's true. Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and thank you for reading and keeping up with my fics despite my bad habit of inconsistent updates!

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><p><strong>3<strong>

At ten o'clock the Grangers have started up on an electronic Muggle singing device, otherwise known as the "karaoke machine," with the food platters half-gone and the alcohol free-flowing. In this fumbling attempt at showcasing homegrown musical talent, the children have taken to hiding underneath the tables, grabbing the ankles of any passerby for fun like the little bastards they are.

Draco stands by as the Grangers take turns singing into the machine, following along – some terribly, some quite expertly – at the words lighting up on the screen, which are superimposed on an over-saturated, cheesy landscape. He keeps glancing at Granger, who is sitting next to her mum and dad on a very dated paisley couch. He wonders if she is going to have a go at it, too. She doesn't look nearly drunk enough – her hands are folded very primly on her lap, posture rigid, brow furrowed like a disturbed Headmistress – as one should be to musically humiliate themselves in front of family and an ex-boyfriend. This he notes with disappointment. What a way to get the party really started – for Granger to do something wild and reckless like _sing karaoke_.

It is during Uncle Ned's painful rendition of a Muggle pop song when Granger's parents slip away to the kitchen, and Draco settles himself in the vacant spot next to Granger. It's a weird feeling – yes, just _one_ specific weird feeling in a night full of weird feelings. But see, the last time he and Granger were on a couch, they definitely weren't sitting, and his nostalgia sets in.

"I've heard that the face you wear on New Year's Day is the face you'll wear for the rest of the year," he says to her. "And for the past twenty minutes your expression would be best described as 'constipated.'"

Granger rolls her eyes but keeps her face ahead of her, boring holes into Uncle Ned's lumpy, tragic, snowman-infested Holiday sweater that is five days too late. "Better than 'smug bastard.'"

"I think the females in this room would beg to disagree." She scoffs. "Well? Aren't you going to be delighting us with a special number?" He gestures to the karaoke mic currently being manhandled by Uncle Ned.

They both wince when Uncle Ned's voice cracks in an admirable effort over hitting a high note.

"I don't sing," Granger says, her expression morphing into one of exasperation and mortification.

To which Draco replies, "And I don't date Gryffindors." This he regrets immediately, because he then watches the stone wall come down over Granger's face.

"We never dated," she says, with a hint of ice, and he is left mentally kicking himself as she gets up from the couch and walks out of the living room. In a very dramatic moment set up against the confusing sound of a grown man singing falsetto in the background, he promptly follows after her, leaving his drink behind. Every cringe-worthy, wrong note makes his heart rate spike and his body flinch and he wonders how Granger could endure this, year after year, listening to drunken middle-aged men sing, of whom it should be a criminal offense. Cruel and unusual punishment. That would be it.

He finds her shrugging on a thick beige coat, flicking her hair out from underneath the collar.

"Granger—" What should he say after this? What _could_ he say after this? 'Let's have a chat.' They'd never done that before. They'd argued and thrown curses at each other and kissed and groped and fucked but they'd never had something so simple and so uncomplicated as "a chat." Chats were for people who barely understood each other, who wouldn't know electric chemistry if it sat on their lap with Galleons hanging from its nipples.

No, he and Granger did not and would never "chat."

Suddenly, her mum pops her head in from the kitchen. "Hermione dear? That blasted cat's got out again." She glances between the two of them with a hint of suspicion, and Draco has to bite his tongue from being his rude, smug bastard-y self and tell her to go away, wasn't she aware she was interrupting a very important, perhaps even life-changing moment?

And as if Granger knows exactly the nature of the thoughts going through his mind, she glares at him. "I'll find him, Mum." And without another word, she walks out of the door.

Draco sighs and quickly locates his coat in the coat closet before stepping out and following after her. The snow is old and crunchy under his feet, with the roads slick and rainbow-colored from the reflection of the jolly Christmas lights still strung up on every roof. He can hear the roar of people in houses that'd had the same idea of a New Year's Eve party – a sad mob of Muggles waiting for the clock to chime midnight, and drinking the old year away in the meantime. It fascinates him. He can even make out the faint sounds of another badly-sung karaoke song from down the street. Apparently New Year's Eve is the perfect day for inflicting some humiliation on oneself, which makes him feel a little bit better about what he needs to do. But only a little.

She is half a block ahead of him, but he catches up. He is a good deal taller than her, so his long strides eat up the distance quickly. As he gets closer he hears her calling out the cat's name. It's the same blasted cat she's had since Hogwarts.

"Crookshanks," she calls out. "Here kitty, here Crooks."

"You know you could just _Accio_ the stupid little hairball," he says from behind her.

"Magic's not permitted here, Malfoy. You know that." He remembers that Granger is such a diligent rule-follower that she hides her wand in her bedroom every time she visits the Muggle world. She doesn't even touch it until she's back in the wizarding world. On that thought, he pats himself down, searching his coat pockets.

_Oh sod it all_, he groans to himself. She'd hidden his wand, too.

In a freakish moment of psychic ability, she then says, "You'll get your wand back when you leave," without turning around. "I couldn't risk it. Not around my family."

"Right. As aware as I am that you've cast me as the epic villain of your ultimate happiness, you should know by now that I'd never hurt your family." He lets out a breath, which comes out as a white wisp. "Despite the pain they cause my eardrums with their vocal chords," he mutters.

She doesn't stop walking. "If you hate it so much, I would very enthusiastically invite you to leave and never come back. Nothing here is detaining you from your own very posh party." Her tone is biting and he knows that the same kind of thoughts have been going through her mind about tonight, too. "You can go back and tell your lot about the Muggle circus show you witnessed tonight. Go on, I'm sure you'd all like to end the year feeling very superior."

This, for him, is the last straw.

"Hold on," he calls out, stopping on the sidewalk. "What the hell's got your knickers in a bunch? I don't know if we were at the same party, but I was very civil to your family, thank you very fucking much."

"You," she hisses, whipping around, her cheeks flushed from the cold and also from what he imagines to be her boiling disdain for him, "don't get to _talk_ about my knickers. All right? In fact, please remove yourself from this deluded notion that you have any right talking about my life – especially my undergarments – at all. Let alone showing up at my house! On New Year's eve! And eating my Aunt Marsha's tamales!"

It's likely she is very drunk and this is her way of manifesting it. This is a feeling native to any and all her dealings with Draco, right from the beginning. It was sordid and electrifying and made her want to bash her head into anything concrete.

"I mean,_ who_ do you think you are?" she asks him. "You might be the tits in the magical world, Draco, but not here. You don't belong here. Not in my house, not with my family, not on my aunt's couch, judging my tone-deaf relatives – who, despite their quirks," she says hesitantly, "I actually love, thank you very much. And you certainly do not belong out here, on the street where I broke my first bone learning how to ride a bloody bike, making me feel horrid on New Year's Eve."

For a moment he mentally goes back in time and tries to step out of his body. Yes, he was very aware of how misplaced he felt in her home, with her family, scrutinizing her quaint and borderline tacky Muggle furnishings, and their comfortable confidence in singing very badly in front of each other. But hadn't he been trying to prove something to Granger? He imagines it was how she'd felt, coming to his 21st birthday party, surrounded by frivolity and extravagance and purebloods with bloodlines so undiluted and ancient they practically had mercury running through their veins.

But of course he doesn't divulge his inner workings to her. She'd probably have a stroke.

"I think you're missing the point, Granger, which is that despite all of your silent, tortured, _stewing_, you never actually _threw me out_."

It's a valid point, and Draco, ever the chaser of useless arguments that involved Granger, would gladly pursue this part of the conversation to the end of time, if provoked.

Granger seems stunned for a minute, her eyes sort of glazed over with the realization that _no, she actually fucking hadn't_, before she blinked it away and restored her usual, stern-Head Girl demeanor. "Because I wanted to know why. And maybe I thought it'd be like the consolation prize after enduring a night of discomfort and pain, I don't know."

_Discomfort and pain_? He is so sure she can only be referring to the karaoke, which is practically the musical equivalent of Russian Roulette.

"Why what?"

"Oh come off it, don't patronize me, Draco. You didn't just show up here for nothing. You don't just go strolling into the Muggle world because you _felt_ like popping in for a visit."

"You're right, I don't show up anywhere just for nothing," he says quickly. They meet eyes, her cheeks flushing as she discerns a hint of what he'd meant, before he goes on. "And I _don't_ stroll. It cramps my style." He spits this last part with disgust.

"So then what is it?" she asks impatiently. "What's here you couldn't find in the wizarding world, in your poncy little shops, or in your Gringotts vault?"

His heart starts beating a little faster. He notices, out of the corner of his eye, that there is a tiny little face peeping out at them from a window of the house they are in front of. And one house over, an entire segment of Christmas lights are dim and flickering. He thinks it is a perfect metaphor for his hope. Dim and flickering, hoping to last through the night.

"It's a funny story," he starts.

"Then skip to the end."

So he does.

"I'm sorry," he says, except the problem is that he wants to keep saying it, needs to, until she forgives him, which is a terrible place to be in but he deserves it, yes he does, every bit of it. He tells himself he deserved the cold shoulder, the sleepless nights, the loneliness, the lack of meaning in his life – so glitzy yet profoundly lackluster in precisely the way motivational speeches preach against. He knew the cruelly unjust side of life but also that circumstances had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right – either you had it coming or not – and that most of the time it had been spot on for him.

Even when the mystic had told him he was going to die a lot sooner than he'd predicted – he deserved that, he deserved the pathetic emptiness that resulted from a thorough (though drunken) evaluation of his life.

Everything that happened to him in his life he deserved, except Granger, whom he did not deserve, and thus lost. Not even in a dignified sort of way – the way he wished he did.

She is silent, one adorable brow furrowed from the abrupt turn in their conversation. "For what?" And he knows exactly what she is asking. Is he apologizing for her ruining her New Year's Eve or for ruining what they had and possibly the Nameless But Great Thing they could've had, had he not given into his tendency to sabotage anything that would destroy him to truly lose?

His voice is grim, lodged in a dark trench somewhere in his throat. "I pretended it was nothing."

"It _was_ nothing," she says cruelly. "We were young and it was nice. But it was nothing."

Instantly he goes from repentant to indignant. How _dare_ she use the two N-words he hates the most? "Nothing" and "Nice"! If he truly had any sodding power in this world, he would eradicate those two words from the English vocabulary. He would set them on fire, drown them, blast them into oblivion. They were substitute words – words meant to veil the things they really meant and demean the other person in the conversation.

"Now _you_ apologize."

She scoffs. "For what?"

"For lying out of your arse, is what," he snaps at her. He is irritated that his attempt at redemption is being ridiculed and degraded by her bitterness. "If what we had was nothing, I would not have crossed the magical-Muggle threshold for you, Granger – but I did, and now I'm here. So the least you can do is treat me like a proper human being."

"_You_ don't get to lecture me on how to treat people properly." Her voice is strung intensely tight, eyes blazing in a wet world blanketed in white. For the first time he is glad magic isn't allowed here. "I was doing fine without you. And my guess is that you're such a sadistic prick that you sensed this and came strolling in here—"

"For the last time, I don't stroll!"

"You're like a tornado, you know? You drop down on people having a perfectly all right time in life, God forbid an actually _pleasant_ one, and you turn over tables, rip out the walls, and make house pets disappear."

"I had nothing to do with your blasted hairball going missing. That was completely on his own accord. And while we're on this topic of proper treatment, maybe you ought to respect his decision."

"Right!" she scoffs. "Like you respected mine when I decided not to go to your stupid, frivolous, little party tonight?"

He didn't realize that their voices had begun to rise in volume until this last part, where her voice rang out in the empty, snow-laden street. They are fighting. He had come here to reconcile, maybe even to win her back in the last moments of this life he'd known for so long (and yet so short), and they are fighting. It occurs to him that the absence of each other in their lives has traumatized them both so deeply that they can't even be civil with each other when they are alone, when there is no one and nothing to pretend for. Here they are, on New Year's Eve, mere minutes away from ringing in the New Year, and they are airing out all of their dirty laundry on this suburban Muggle street.

He is running out of time, isn't he? What shall he say? He doesn't want it to be "I love you, I always have, which is the most terrifying thing to become conscious of" because he knows how those stories end. They _end_. It's an irrational fear, sure, because all things end – one of them certainly being his life, tonight. But despite their sordid break-up, he had always seen him and Granger as this ever-extending limb, or like a mythical creature. If you cut its head off, two more would grow back in its place, and so on. It certainly felt that way for him sometimes.

Everything else the mystic had told him had come true. She said that harm would befall his mother, and she was right – her mother slipped and fell in the bath, breaking her hip. She also said that new life would be introduced into his, which it had – Crabbe had gotten some girl pregnant.

So, they are arguing about the wrong things. They should be arguing about how he's supposed to die not knowing she's mad about him like he is about her. Over how she should pledge never to love any other man after he's gone. And how he's supposed to leave this body knowing he hasn't kissed her in well over two years.

Finally, he says, through his teeth (oh how he'll miss those grinding veneers when he's gone): "It wasn't nothing. Or, at least, if you insist it be nothing, then it is a nothing that exists in complete contradiction of its nothingness. A very big, sleepless nothing. A very still-not-over kind of nothing."

Here, Granger just stares at him. She is a healthy combination of speechlessness and skepticism. He knows she is the last person to ever be won over with words, but he wants permission to kiss her. He wants her brains in their correct position before he jostles them out of place again by how passionately he could disorient her with one last – and long overdue – kiss.

"I'm not here to fuck with you, Granger," he says seriously. " I'm here to tell you—"

He is cut off by a shout across the street. "Oi! You two bickering! Is this your mangy cat?"

Both he and Granger look towards the voice. There is a man holding a beer in one hand and a large, hairy, four-legged thing by the scruff of its neck. Granger sighs with both frustration and relief, confirming that it is, in fact, her mangy cat.

And then many things happen at once.

Crookshanks shrieks and manages to leap from his grasp, darting down the street into the main road, just as a pair of headlights speed into view. Granger screams. Draco doesn't think and just acts – his Snitch-grabbing instincts kick into gear and he sprints after it, barely scooping it up and tossing it across the way as he hears the shrill sound of faulty brakes. The car pummels into his flesh and sinew and bones, and past the roaring in his ears, there is the sound of shattering glass.

And then, in every essence of the word, he's down. From the sheer force of the vehicle and its speed, his body is thrown into the air and folds uselessly, like wet paper, where he lands. And for once in his life, there is no magic to save him. Or if it is, the magic is too late. And his last fading thought is, How funny.

He'd been too late, too.


End file.
